The assembled sycophants responded by rendering unto Caesar the dutiful laughter required anytime the Pontiff of the Civil Religion decants a carefully scripted specimen of presidential “wit.” On this occasion the affected mirth was a bit more labored than usual, perhaps because it was freighted with the knowledge that Obama had the means to make good on those words if he cared to, and that nobody would hold him accountable if the Jonas Brothers were vaporized as a result of his Caligulan caprice.

Viewed in retrospect following five years of drone-conducted child-slaughter -- including the murder, on Obama's supposed authority, of a 16-year-old U.S. citizen -- that line can't be viewed merely as a profoundly tasteless after-dinner joke, but rather as a glimpse into the mind of an authentic sociopath.

When Barack Obama or those speaking on his behalf, indulge in terroristic language, they are engaging in what the U.S. Supreme Court, in Brandenburg v. Ohio, described as a "true threat." This cannot be said of the ill-advised and tasteless Facebook comments made by 18-year-old Austin, Texas resident Justin Carter, who was arrested -- with the help of a federal Fusion Center -- and charged with making a "terroristic threat" after his comments were reported by an anonymous informant in Canada. As a detailed an infuriating report by the Dallas Observer documents, Carter is now in legal “limbo,” his life having been ruined by prosecutors who serve the same system that routinely annihilates people overseas.

About two months after the Sandy Hook massacre, Carter was involved in a Facebook conversation dealing with a game called "League of Legends.” Indulging in the kind of hyperbolic verbal posturing that is typical in such forums, Carter described himself as "f***ed in the head" and said "I think I'ma SHOOT UP A KINDERGARTEN." Carter and his father would later insist the comments were the undisciplined outpouring of a game-obsessed teenage nerd.

After taking a couple of months to devise a pseudo-legal rationale to arrest Carter, the Austin Police seized him while he was at work, held him for a month without charges, and questioned him without allowing access to an attorney. Detective Joe Robles, employing the time-honored police technique called "lying," told the terrified teenager would be released if he admitted to posting the Facebook comments.

Carter fell for the ruse, and as a reward was transferred to a different jail, saw his bond increased to $500,000, and was offered an eight-year prison sentence. That coerced "confession" is the only thing tying Carter to a screencap of a tiny fragment of a larger Facebook conversation: The prosecutors are pretending that Facebook -- a company notorious for its eagerness to cooperate with the State -- won't allow them access to the entire thread, which would provide exculpatory context.

A search of Carter's home found no firearms, no bomb-making materials, no documentary or physical evidence of preparations to carry out a terrorist act, or an inclination to commit such a crime.

After being thrown into the company of violent people accused of actual crimes, Carter was sexually assaulted and wound up on suicide watch.

Carter's family succeeded in publicizing the teenager's plight, and his typically indifferent "public defender" was replaced by defense attorney Don Flanary. As a result, prosecutors modulated their demands, offering Carter a term of 10 years' probation in exchange for pleading guilty to a felony.

Flanary observes, correctly, that "the case should be dismissed. He didn't do anything wrong." The techniques employed to extract the confession are "what dictatorships all around the world used to do," Flanary continues. "They'd say, `If you confess to your crimes against the state, we will let you go.'"

Under the American concept of justice, Flanary points out, "First you prove the crime, then you get the punishment"¦. But now, in Justin's case, [it's] `Let's do the punishment first and then we'll see if we can prove the crime later. The damage has been done."

The same approach is used by the Obama administration in dispensing death from above on distant, unsuspecting people who are arbitrarily designated as "suspected militants" -- as well as any women or children who might be in the vicinity, and the emergency personnel who are taken out by a "double-tap" strike as they desperately seek to save the victims of the first one.

A suitably ambitious prosecutor, with the help of predatory police officers, can transmute social media trash talk into terrorism. However, when Obama -- a certified mass murderer — plausibly threatens to slaughter people by remote control, this is "policy."